Sabir Wilcher

Sabir Wilcher 304719
Green Bay Correctional Institution
PO Box 19033
Green Bay, Wi 54307


My name is Sabir M. L Wilcher and I am currently housed at the Green Bay Correctional Institution. I'm 30 years old and will be 31 in December. At the time I was arrested in 1995,1 was only 15 years old and not well educated. I was convicted of first degree intentional homicide, 6 days before I turned 16, in 1995.1 was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility in December 2025.



Before my conviction, I had never been arrested of a violent offense and I wasn't part of the juvenile detention system like Lincoln Hills, Wells, etc. People would have described me as being very shy when I was a kid. I only completed school through the 6th grade. I was bullied a lot growing up and I only wanted to fit in and impress the same kids who would beat me up every day and chase me home. Both of my parents had a crack cocaine addiction and I basically had to take care of myself. We lived in a bad neighborhood in Milwaukee with drug houses on the same street.

I've been down now a total of 15 + years. While I've been in prison, I've gotten my HSED, 2 Vocational Trade Certificates in Welding and Building Maintenance and Construction. I've completed CGIP phase 1 and 2, Able Minds program, and tutor training.

Although I'm still a little shy, I now accept the fact that everyone is not going to like me and I don't need people's approval to be who I am. I believe I have become a person of substance and value. I have avoided gang activity and drug use in prison and have worked on becoming healthier, mentally and physically. I no longer think like the child who pulled that trigger 15 years ago. I value the lives of others, as well as my own. My goal is to get out and show my nieces and nephews how to be productive and positive role models in the community.

I would also like to share my experience with other kids and help teach them the value of education and that fast money can lead you to bad situations. I just wish people would see me for the man I've become and not the kid I used to be...

Thank you,

Sabir Wilcher

_______________________________________________________________
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

December 25, 1995

TOO YOUNG TO SHAVE, NOT TO KILL
Teen's life collapsed into death At IS, he was a drug house lookout who murdered for his boss —————

David DOEGE Journal Sentinel staff

"Looking back, there are many things 1 would have done differently, and avoiding drugs and my so-called friends would be first on the list." 16-year-old convicted murderer Sabir Wilcher in a letter to Circuit Judge Patricia D. McMahon.

As he strode hump-shouldered into Circuit Court rubbing his chin, Sabir Wilcher had the gangly gait of a young man who wasn't completely comfortable in a body that had not finished growing.

At 15, Wilcher was not old enough to legally do things Wee drink and vote and wasn't physically mature enough to shave.

But Wilcher was old enough to work in a drug house. He was old enough to commit a cold-blooded, execution-style murder of a friend he had known since childhood. And he was old enough to serve a life prison term with parole eligibility beginning Dec. 4, 2025.

"You will be 46 years old at that time when they can consider whether you are appropriate for release to the community," Circuit Judge Patricia D. McMahon told Wilcher. Moments later, Wilcher trudged from McMahon's courtroom, his shoulders slouched the same way they were when he entered.

"I think he didn't have a chance messing with the people from Chicago," his mother, Lynette Wilcher, had told McMahon earlier, referring to gang members who recruited her son to work in a drug house across an alley from his home on W. North Ave. "Where are they now?

"They are on the outside looking in while my son is on the inside looking out."

* * * "I am speaking out of my hart (sic) that what I done was verey (sic) stupid. I would like to say that I am sorry for what I done and being in here (the County Jail) for eight months made me think that what I done was wrong."

* * *

"About two years ago, when Sabir was 13 years old, the supportive resources in his life began to slowly deteriorate," Julie Paasch-Anderson wrote in a waiver study for Circuit Judge Russell Stamper in June. "Both his parents developed a crack cocaine addiction.

"He entered middle school, and the connections that he had at Lloyd Street Grade School were severed. He was introduced to alcohol and marijuana, which he used on a regular basis as time progressed."

The "connections" at Lloyd Street School were a woman who served as a volunteer parent and a physical education teacher. Wilcher's attorney, Ann T. Bowe, said the two took a special interest in the boy because they recognized he was headed for trouble and wanted to "rescue him from the streets."

"His clothes were often ripped and dirty," Paasch-Anderson reported in her study. "He had poor hygiene, and other children often avoided him because of his body odor."

The volunteer parent gave Wilcher clothes, took him on outings and welcomed him at her home. The teacher allowed Wilcher to help out in the gym, got him a membership in die YMCA and took him to sporting events. But when Wilcher left Lloyd Street School for middle school he lost his two rescuers and gravitated toward a street gang, according to the study.

At home, meanwhile. Lynette Wilcher's "judgment was impaired by her own drug and alcohol use," according to the study. Sabir Wilcher's father also had a drug problem and once was put under house arrest by a street gang because of his cocaine debt, the study said.

Within a year of his involvement with the gang, young Wilcher began selling drugs. By March, he was hanging out at the drug house across the alley.

"I have never denied my involvement in this. You see I could not live with myself knowing I was responsible for taking the life of someone."

* * *

Police reports indicate that Emanuel Johnson, a 21-year-old man running the drug house, was the first person to tell Wilcher that "the minister," a shadowy figure from Chicago, wanted Wilcher to work at the drug house. Johnson eventually sent Wilcher by bus to Chicago to meet the minister, and when he returned a couple days later, he was assigned the task of keeping watch for police and was to be paid $100 every other day.

Inside the drug house on N. 14th St., a brown, rundown duplex, worked three "servers" and a "weight man" named Elvis Anderson, 20, who packaged the cocaine, according to police. Also inside the house were a sawed-off ,410-gauge shotgun, a rifle, a semiautomatic pistol and a .22-caliber, black revolver, according to police.

Beside in charge of the drug house, Johnson served as the runner who brought cocaine to Milwaukee and took the $700 to $800 daily proceeds to Chicago, according to a criminal complaint.

After a disagreement with the minister in early April, Johnson later told police, he began forming a plan to kill the minister and Anderson. Anderson, Johnson explained, had to die because he was too close to the minister.

* * *

"At night, I can't sleep. I tose (sic) and turn thinking about that night over and over agin (sic)."

* * *

On the night of April 22, Johnson gave Wilcher the .22-caliber revolver and told him it was his duty to kill Anderson. According to the plan, when it was time for Anderson to leave for the night, he would have to be driven home and it was during that ride when he would be killed.

Later, when Anderson asked for a ride, Johnson got behind the wheel of a friend's car, Anderson got into the passenger seat and Wilcher, with the revolver in his pocket, sat behind him.

Moments after they drove off, Anderson said he wanted to pick up some food, so Johnson drove to a McDonald's restaurant at 920 W. North Ave. After pulling away from the drive-through, Johnson rolled his window up, turned tine radio volume to high, glanced at Wilcher and nodded.

As Anderson sat with the bag of food in his lap, Wilcher raised the handgun and held it about 6 inches from the back of Anderson's head, he later told police. "Wilcher closed his eyes, turned his head down and to the left and pulled the trigger three times," Police Detective Allan Schoessow testified at Wilcher's preliminary hearing earlier this year.

Johnson drove to a dead-end alley in the 2400 block of N. 10th St. and pulled Anderson's body out of the car. After taking a packet of cocaine from Anderson's pocket, Johnson drove back to the drug house.

" You act like you done this before." Johnson told Wilcher, according to a police report.

When they went back inside the drug house, Wilcher handed the gun to a server who cleaned it, Wilcher later said, before he took it home.

The next day, police announced the arrests of Johnson and Wilcher.

Johnson subsequently took his case to trial, was convicted and sentenced to a life prison term with no parole eligibility for 40 years.

Wilcher pleaded guilty in November and was sentenced recently.

"He was 15 years and four months old at the time of the shooting," Bowe said at the sentencing hearing. "This is not a young person who was saved from the streets by family members ... but someone who was able to shoot somebody in the back of the head with no provocation."

* * *

"I hope the victoms (sic) family forgives me for what I have done. But now all I can do is accept the penalty for the crime I committed. I am so verey (sic) sorry!!"